LI: St Andrew's Beach
One of the game’s most significant shortcomings today lies in the inaccessibility and unaffordability of quality architecture. With the majority of the world’s architecture darlings eye-wateringly expensive or intensely private, golfers’ ability to feel the type of golf which will keep their mind on and heart in the game is painfully restricted. At a time where ‘growing the game’ has become every association and organisation’s go to catch phrase, the ability of engaging and entertaining grounds to do just that seems to be more and more neglected.
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40 minutes South of Melbourne’s famed Sandbelt, the rolling terrain of the Mornington Peninsula is Australia’s mecca for excellent, affordable golf and Tom Doak’s St Andrew’s Beach stands as its North Star.
Big, bold and rugged
In contrast to the Sandbelt, where the courses are often regarded as being excellent in spite of their unremarkable sites, ‘Cups Country’ is flooded with dramatic tumbling hills, choppy landforms and heaving ridges, presenting ideal sandy grounds for captivating golf. Land of such natural character plays perfectly into Tom Doak’s affinity for minimalist design, where the land does the talking and identifying greens and tees becomes the heart of the exercise.
Doak himself nominates St Andrew’s Beach as his most natural course, where holes were found in the ground rather than built - the lack of earthworks required to carve out a compelling routing a nod to the immense bones of the site. Across a sprawling 180 hectares, its features are unique, its landforms big and bold, and the scale of the hazards matched up beautifully with the size of the property. Rugged, cavernous and wild, the windswept bunkers have been carved blown out over time and blend perfectly into their surrounds as they crowd driving lines and muddle approaches. Born from nature, St Andrews Beach is a rollicking thrill-ride handsomely connected to its grounds.
SAB's hazards sit windswept and natural
It’s no secret that a distinct hallmark of Doak’s work centres around his instinct for identifying a variety of delightful green sites and a willingness to be bold with their internal contours. The eccentricities of the Mornington Peninsula’s land movement presented ample opportunity to flex his eye for greens, with a smorgasbord of green sites as varied as any with surfaces benched into dunes, carved into natural amphitheatres, perched high atop plateaus and tucked blindly beyond a dune.
Surrounded by short grass and often steep runoffs, they are primed to test short games and offer a multitude of options to recover. Doak’s showstopping green sites are the heart and soul of the layout, delivering 18 approaches which golfers won’t hit anywhere else on the planet and commanding imagination, creativity and execution – a recipe for engagement and enjoyment.
Plenty of short grass surrounds the greens
Number One
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Few openers capture the essence of a layout and its setting quite like the first at St Andrews Beach. The property’s highest point presents endless views across Cups Country – a vista which may be the most quintessentially Australian in all of golf. A par-five across heaving terrain, it’s the enormous cross bunkers dug into the hillside short of the green which define the hole as golfers are forced to decide whether to fire blindly over them or lay up to the right for a sighted angle at the flag. 520 yards of rugged beauty, awe and confusion.
Grand hazards shield the first green
Number Two
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In a land blessed with some of the world’s finest short par fours, golfers couldn’t be blamed for thinking that the second may well be the pick of the bunch. Entirely reachable at 290 yards but with a tough green to hold, the fairway cambers quickly to the left feeding balls towards the flag and a fronting hazard. Great short fours provide options and cast volatility on the scorecard, and the second offers both in spades equally brilliant with driver or as a drive and pitch.
An abundance of options at the second
Number Three
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The brawny two-shot third makes a wonderful antithesis to the second – a half-par hole in the other direction of equal quality. With an innocuous tee shot sweeping right across a rare flat section of the property, it’s the confounding long approach which owns the thrill. The partially obscured, pushed up bowl is tucked snug into an amphitheatre of dunes and bushland – one of the rounds most remarkable green sites and exacting shots.
A special green site is found at three
Number Six
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Quality uphill one-shotters are a staple of the Sandbelt and sixth at St Andrews Beach could slide seamlessly into any of their routings. Another magical green site amongst native bush boasts a dramatic half-bowl which feeds balls from long left, while a steep false front deals just enough uncertainty.
A distinctly Australian on-shotter
Number Nine
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The severity of St Andrew’s Beach’s land is most felt in the number of elevated tees and greens which sit atop or halfway up dune ridges – there are few courses in the world which yield more approaches where the bottom of the flag is unsighted. The ninth is one of a handful of holes following this trend as it’s rambunctious fairway threads through a valley of sandhills. Its green is a wild one, perched atop a dune with a large mound at its front and a vertical backstop at its rear – the best path to the flag rarely direct. Amongst a layout of eccentric greens, the compact rolls of the ninth present a case for it being the most electric.
Nobody could blame the golfer confused by the ninth approach
The Thirteenth
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St Andrew’s Beach is imminently playable for all; wide corridors, fast turf and next to no forced carries, but all great courses need a bruising hole which separates the very good from the good players. Completely blind from the tee as it heads over hefty ridge, the 450-yard thirteenth is famously tough. With a fairway as convoluted as any, a charming degree of luck is required to find a flat lie and favourable angle into the green. The comically small surface lies veiled in the heart an enormous catch basin where anything which trundles into its mitts has a chance to finish close. Though its strategy is a little more rigid than the majority of the routing, its audacity and challenge feels wonderfully timed.
A welcome bowl closes out the thirteenth
The Fourteenth
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At fourteen, Doak found a wonderful counter to the drivable second. Rising to the right, a narrow diagonal green sits up on a plateau. As tempting as it is to have a crack, a miss short and right leaves a terrifying recovery, while a layup left opens up the green’s length.
The sixteenth fairway sweeping right and rising sharply
The Eighteenth
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A grand final stand, the tee ball at eighteen is dominated by diagonal string of cross-bunkers which guard a speed slot up the right, presenting an opportunity for a heroic final swing. Tucked into a secluded corner, the cleverly angled surface is a better catcher for approaches from the left side and makes it one of the world’s best closing holes.
Rugged traps and a charming green - a fitting finish to the round
Few loops in the world are as fulfilling as one of St Andrews Beach – its natural rugged beauty, diversity of landforms and the range of eccentric shots and holes on offer is one of the game’s great joys. In more ways than one it’s a place which sums up many of the game’s shortcomings; little is manufactured or over-maintained, the playing grounds remain uncluttered – the terrain maximised to drive its strategy, and for sheer enjoyment golfers would love little more than to return to the first tee. For all of these reasons and the fact it can be accessed for little more that $100AUD, St Andrews Beach is one of Australia’s most important courses.
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When Tom Doak nominates it as the course he would love to play most every day, there can be no doubting the pleasures of St Andrew’s Beach.